[davidzweig]

Also many Iranians speak 'Turk' and understand Turkish from watching Turkish telenovelas on satellite TV.

[rvense]

More than half of the Iranian population belong to an ethnic minority, and the biggest by far is the Turkish speaking one, the Azeri - it's something like 1/3 of the population as far as I remember. I don't know if non-Azeri learn Turkish from TV, but for a lot of Iranians it's simply their first language.

[geoka9]

Good point! Although, what they call 'Turk' is actually Azeri :) (Part of the historical Azerbaijan is in Iran.)

[rich_sasha]

How very interesting, I understand Turkish and Farsi are totally unrelated (Turkic and Indo-European language families).